


Ties

by mythstoorfoot



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-05-03 00:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14556975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythstoorfoot/pseuds/mythstoorfoot
Summary: After everything that happened on Crait, Rey and Kylo remain mysteriously connected in ways deeper than either of them dared imagine. Angsty Reylo goodness because I just can't help it. Major spoilers for TLJ.





	1. Noose

**Author's Note:**

> So I didn't really like Reylo until I watched TLJ, but now I GET IT and I'm onboard. Let's do this. Like pretty much everyone else, as soon as I left the cinema I was imagining how that Force connection would continue on and where it might take our two confused lovebirds. To me, this is the most obvious path forward on that journey.
> 
> This fic contains spoilers for The Last Jedi, obviously, so tread carefully.

The Falcon was quiet. Now that things seemed calm again, now that hours had melted away and the terrible events of the past days were already transposing themselves to the realm of dreams (or, more likely, nightmares), everyone had, as if on cue, claimed storage rooms as quarters or squirreled themselves away in cosy corners of the ship to rest. Only Chewie was still awake at the helm... and herself, of course.

She wanted to be asleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Her mind was a screen thick with images: a wind-swept island, a lightsaber, a hole so deep and so black it would swallow the whole galaxy, Kylo Ren's eyes under that mask, her face reflected back at her.

So instead of laying in her bunk she decided to take a stroll around the ship's long corridors. She ran her fingers over its surfaces, took in its sharp metallic smells. The place was a mess, even more so than usual, with Porg nests in the vents and the few supplies they had brought with them from Crait piled perilously against the walls. Already the Falcon seemed like a home, more welcoming to her than Jakku had ever been. And Han lingered in the air like a memory.

She was entering the main hold, contemplating a game of Dejarik, when suddenly everything went quiet. It wasn't like before, when the hum of the Falcon, its engines and generators, was an ever-present comfort. This was a deathly, unearthly quiet. A thrill of tension gripped her: it was happening again.

She turned and there he was, dark and cold and unreadable.

She was angry, yes, it burned in her like a white flame, and she felt her fists balling uncontrollably. But there was something else inside her too, swimming underneath the fire like a fish in water, and she couldn't quite grasp the whole form of it. Was it relief? Could he see the edges of it hidden in her eyes?

He kept staring at her. She wanted to shut the door in his face like the last time on Crait. But there was no door, and so she didn't.

"I've had enough of this," is what she said. "All of this."

He said nothing.

The fire was burning up through her, turning her tongue to flames. "If Snoke's dead then who's connecting us?" she spat.

His body twitched in the smallest of shrugs, and she couldn't tell if it was an admission of guilt or of his own lack of understanding.

She was overcome by an unexpected and piercing jolt of sadness through the rage. His eyes were tired and bloodshot, his skin wan, his shoulders heavy. He stood stiffly, projecting the hard aura of Kylo Ren, but she could see a broken Ben Solo hiding behind it all. All this pain, all this hatred... for nothing. She remembered how, after they both collapsed in the throne room, she had awoken first, kneeled over him, touched his arm and cheek, checked for signs of his breathing. Still reeling with shock, she had been afraid of what she was afraid of, afraid that by trying to release the bond between them she was in fact tugging it tighter. If only he'd come with her.

"I wish you'd come with me," he whispered.

In that moment his eyes were full of such conflicted sorrow it seemed like it would tear him apart, even as his frame loomed above her so solid and certain.

She erupted then. It was too much - all he was, all he could be, all he refused to become. And the way he  _wouldn't stop staring at her_. She stormed away in the opposite direction, her footfalls ringing loud across the Falcon. Reaching the cockpit, she slammed the door behind her and felt the connection between them sever. That familiar hum returned to her ears.

Chewbacca turned around and growled at her in annoyance.

"Sorry, Chewie," she said as she sat down in the co-pilot's seat. "I'm antsy. Give me something to do."

The next few hours were spent in a blur of simple maintenance tasks and odd jobs around the ship as the rest of the crew slowly roused themselves from sleep. Rey was glad. It felt good to use her hands, her eyes and her instinct, and disengage her brain.

.

.

.

Approximately ten hours later it happened again. Rey had finally worn herself out and felt ready for sleep. General Organa (it still felt weird calling her Leia) was deep in serious discussion with the remaining members of the resistance about their next move. While the conversation dragged on, Rey whispered a quiet goodbye to Finn and managed to slip away.

She made it to the empty crew's quarters but her eyes were already slipping shut as she crawled into the small cot. Then, on the cusp of sleep, a black shape appeared in her peripheral vision by the doorway. For a second she wasn't sure if someone had walked in or if a demon had wrestled free from her dreams. Blinking, and bolting upright, she realised it was  _him_  again.

"I'm sorry," he said, and it seemed like he meant it.

He was wearing a thinner, lighter version of his usual heavy garments and for a brief sleep-addled moment Rey took specific note that yes, he did have his shirt on this time. He looked uncomfortable, maybe even a little sheepish.

"I'm trying..." he started, then had to stop and begin again. "I'm trying to understand."

Rey didn't want to respond. But something made her draw the sheets tighter around her and say, "Understand what?"

He had been staring at the floor, and now he raised his eyes to strike through her with a look of hope, and fear, and desire, and anguish. "Why you chose this, and not everything we could have together."

She had no idea what to say. It struck her how ridiculous this must seem, her sitting hunched in bed and him skulking by the door. A wannabe Jedi and the Supreme Leader's apprentice stuck in these tiny quarters, hating each other, drawn to each other, unable to escape their ties. The dim lighting made him look exactly how he liked to picture himself, draped half in shadow, grim and brooding and tortured. All of a sudden it seemed to Rey like the only thing left to do was laugh. It ripped out of her like bursts of blaster shot.

Kylo wasn't expecting that. Before he could stop himself he was wincing, and the fury that vibrated always beneath the surface rose unbidden.

"We could build the galaxy anew," he yelled. "We could break free from the past and forge a better tomorrow. We could do anything if we were together." He knew how it sounded. He knew he was just making things worse. But he couldn't contain the aggravated beating of his heart, like a creature on a leash, every time he saw her, or touched her, or thought of her trapped in that ship plagued by the ghost of his decisions.

Rey's laughter trailed off. She freed herself from the sheets and came, slowly, step by step, to stand before him. She stared up at him and willed herself not to show the tangle of feeling running through her arms and cheeks and the pit of her stomach. But her eyes were a sea of confusion. Kylo could see her chest rising and falling with uneven breath.

"Don't you get it? I don't care about  _building the galaxy anew_. I care about my friends. About using the Force for good."

Now he couldn't even meet her gaze. "Just don't let yourself get hurt, Rey. I know exactly how much good the Force can do."

"Ben..." she began, then bit her tongue. She didn't want to make the same mistake twice. But she felt something bigger than herself thrumming through her veins, a power she could barely begin to comprehend, and it kept pushing her forward down this path. "You keep telling me to let go of the past. But I'm not the one holding on. It's a noose, and it's strangling you."

He was so close to her. If he only reached out his hand he could touch her, and in that instant it seemed like the sanest decision possible, no matter what might come of it, no matter if they might never touch again. If he was going to lose her he wanted to touch her one last time.

He raised his hand. And as he did so she raised hers, and they met together in the space between them, fingertips glancing, touching, then interlocking, the air all around still like the centre of a storm. Ben let out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Rey tried to say something - tried to begin to work out what it was she needed to tell him - but before the words came he had taken his other hand, wrapped it around her waist and used it to pull her towards him. Their eyes were suddenly so close that she could drink in the deep brown of his irises, the pain and potential that warred there. His chest was hard against her. His breath was shallow. She felt like she should want to escape, but she didn't, she felt an energy connecting them and it was so utterly  _right_  that it had to be this way, she could almost see the future emerging now like the light at the end of a long tunnel.

Ben was trying not to lose himself in that light. He'd forced his way into her mind before, a dark regret he held in his heart like a stone, but this felt different, as if she was opening to him and the invisible threads between them were vibrating with a sharp clarity. He couldn't explain what this thing between them had become. All he knew was that he wanted more of it even as he fought against it, wanted to drown in it until the madness he had been swimming in for so long made sense again. Until, somehow, this all came to an end.

He lowered his head to hers, and she raised herself at his touch -

And then there was a loud clanging noise as the door behind them began to open. They sprang apart, as if an electric shock was running through their bodies, and Rey had a chance to steal one last look at Ben's eyes, hungry with longing, before the door swung upon.

It was Finn.

"Finn!" she exclaimed, her heart racing. She knew he was gone from her side, and yet she still felt something of his presence there, crackling like a broken battery.

Her friend gave her a look. "I thought you were sleeping," he said as he entered the quarters.

"Just... restless, I guess," she mumbled.

Rey found it hard to relax for some time after that. Now she really did need sleep, but again it evaded her. Whenever she closed her eyes all she saw was a dark pit leading somewhere deep inside of her... and at the end of it was something she couldn't make out in the darkness, something she sensed growing. Eventually she had to retrieve the broken halves of Luke's lightsaber and place them beside her on the pillow like a protective ward just to rest the stuttering, uncertain staccato of her pulse.

Hours later, when sleep did finally take her, her dreams were confusing and coded, full of tall figures with masks for faces, pools of water and fires blazing with a white hot light. And always, always, for days and weeks and months to come, those hungry brown eyes.


	2. String

Rey tried to move on. Now that she recognised the truth of her parents, now it had crystallised hard and real in her mind, she knew there was no other way forward than to become a different version of herself. So she tried, she really did.

She tried to stop thinking about Ben Solo and his past and the future she thought she could see emerging out of the mist. She tried to forget the way she felt when he was near. She tried to lose the memory of the humming in her core, all the way down to her bones, that told her they were linked in ways she couldn't even start to understand yet.

But all her good intentions fell apart, because he kept showing up.

The last of the resistance was still on the Falcon, racing to protect the hope they represented for the galaxy. Where exactly they were heading and what exactly they were going to do next was still up for heated debate. Rey had her own opinions on that, and she had voiced them loud and clear, but what she knew for a fact was that they were all starting to drive each other crazy stuck in that tiny hunk of metal.

Things would probably have been alright if she wasn't so on edge all the time. But  _he_  kept appearing at the worst moments, and she felt like she had to be continually looking over her shoulder for the sight of him.

The third time Rey saw him she was in the engineering bay cleaning her blaster, for real this time, and he was suddenly there by her side, and she had to stop her finger from twitching in shock on the trigger.

They locked eyes. Rey got her fingers under control.

"So this is happening again," she said as she carried on cleaning.

She was aware of the space between them. It seemed bigger than before, even though he was close, close enough that she could take a step and be within touching distance, close enough that she could feel goosebumps breaking out on her skin, and yet at the same time an unknowable distance away. It was as if they'd gone too far and too fast last time, when they almost, when they nearly...

"Are you doing this?" she asked.

Kylo was wearing a heavy cowl and a glowering stare directed right at her. She wondered what he had being doing the moment before, before he came to stand next to her and she to him.

"At first I thought so," he said quietly. He'd willed it so hard, had spent hours just thinking of her in an abstract, undirected, instinctive way, lost in the dark spiral of his thoughts, and then there she had materialised before him, firm and distinct. He shook his head. A clipped, brisk gesture. "No, I'm not doing this." If he were the effort would be exhausting him, though he wouldn't admit it.

Rey dared not raise her eyes from the blaster. Instead she kept cleaning, kept focused on the physical work her hands were doing in front of her, like they belonged to someone else.

The silence stretched on for an age. It was too raw, too painful, and Kylo took the opportunity then to step away from her, to pull at that distance until it became like a piece of string, frayed and shredded, fit to break at any moment if neither of them acknowledged it.

It was Kylo who finally spoke.

"I can feel my mother's presence on that ship with you."

He sounded a thousand miles away, adrift in an endless void. Rey had to look up to confirm that he was still there. No, she hadn't imagined the sharp pull of pain in his voice: she could see it written on his face, inescapable without that mask to hide his suffering, seeping out of him like he was an unstable reactor core. With a jolt she realised how dangerous all of this could be. How much information might he glean from their connection? If he could sense General Organa, then what else? What if he heard their plans, or listened in to their conversations, or took the thoughts right from her head? She felt a shameful rush of anger. Did she really think Ben would come after them and crush out the last of the resistance? No. But Kylo Ren - she thought back to the frenzied assault on Crait, of the brave soldiers who died there, and the madman lost in a world of black shadow behind it all - he would.

For the first time Rey was afraid of Kylo in this form, of the tall, strong, unstable man trapped in this tiny space with her, not physically there but there in mind and spirit and the force of him as potent as anyone else on the ship.

The frustration overcame her in a second. They were reflections on opposite sides of the same river. They were talking but not listening. It was like looking into a warped mirror, like the glass separating them was too thick to break, so deep it swallowed the light that Rey thought she had felt radiating between them.

"Are we going to carry on like this, then?" she blurted, rounding on him, blaster swinging in her left hand, not sure of what she was saying even as she said it.

Kylo didn't respond. He just looked at her, and his eyes gleamed darkly.

"This is happening, and it's happening for a reason," was all he said. Then he turned around and walked straight through the engineering bay wall.

Rey ran out of the door into the corridor beyond. He had vanished. She struck the wall with her free hand, a childish impulse, but she was glad for the pain because it distracted her for the next half an hour or so, until the anger subsided, until she was able to sit down and think about what the hell Kylo Ren could be planning.

.

.

.

She was flying the ship when he appeared next. Chewie had needed some rest, and she was happy to take his place, happy to sit in that seat and think of all the great and not-so-great people who had sat there before her, doing whatever it took to stay alive, forging their way in the blank expanse of space. Something about it soothed her, she supposed. Spoke to the scavenger in her, the girl who had held on by the tips of her fingers and pure hard-headedness for all those years.

And then he appeared to her side, right there in the cockpit. She could sense his presence like a deep valley in her mind. She felt the hairs on her arms stand up even though she kept telling herself he wasn't really there at all.

She could see immediately that he was distracted. He shot her a frustrated glance, and then looked in front of him as if at some formless other.

"Yes," he said. "I'll see to it myself. Later." He sounded like she remembered from before, like the man who had tortured her and forced himself into the depths of her mind, like someone lost in the projection of himself, but not the quiet boy she had touched fingertips with.

He lowered his head to look down at his hands, stared at the thick black gloves they were encased in, and closed his fingers. He stood like that for some time, apparently done with his conversation.

"Is it hard running a galactic dictatorship now that your Supreme Leader is dead?" Rey drawled from the controls.

"I am the Supreme Leader," he replied, with more bite than he intended.

"Right," said Rey, and internalised this new piece of information. "Isn't that what you've always wanted? Or maybe now that you've got it it's actually nothing you wanted. Nothing you've ever wanted."

Kylo grasped his hands tighter. He knew what she was trying to do. There was a part of him that wanted to respond in turn, to move with her into the light, but he knew where that road lay and how painful it was. He knew what wanting more does to a person. It leads only to unhappiness, bitterness, loathing. It was all he was now.

He opened his fists and took his gloves off slowly enough to let the feeling dissipate.

"What do you really want, Rey?" A voice of icy precision and dark fire.

The gloves fell from his hands, disappearing from Rey's vision before they reached the floor of the cockpit. She watched uneasily. It felt like the bottom of her stomach had fallen away from her too. Her breaths stuck in her mouth. Time had frozen, replaced by an aura of pure tension, and she was caught like a fly in a web.

"Is it friends? Purpose? Glory?" He spun on his heel to look at her, and somehow she wasn't ready for the spear of his gaze piercing her. Those brown eyes were like weapons now, digging into her, fixing her in place, replacing flesh with angry steel. He took a step closer and grasped the back of her seat until he was looming right above her, filling up her vision. "Or is what you _really_  want to be true to the energy you've felt inside your whole life, the energy growing between us, the energy calling us both to come together?" Words and thoughts escaped Rey in that moment. All she was aware of was Kylo so close and so warm, the pulsing force running through her fingertips and her arms and along the chair and joining them both even without touch, the look he gave her of so many dreams wrapped up in nightmares, the sensation of her lips flush against her tongue and her heart too big in her body, the trip her mind went on in only a few seconds through a deep dark hole blossoming into a kaleidoscope of perfect years.

Achingly, the real world returned. Rey was still sitting in the pilot's seat. But Kylo had disappeared even as the mirage of him faded from her mind. She had to glance all around her to confirm it, but he was gone.

She collapsed backwards into her seat and let out a long, controlled breath. Rey had never allowed herself to get lost in daydreams. Even stuck on Jakku, scratching away in the sand, imagining the day her parents would return for her, she had always known when it was time to return to reality. But this was different. It came from outside of herself, it was terrifying and thrilling in almost equal measure, and it sang to her truer than even her deepest, most darkest desires.


	3. Rope

"Rey?"

She looked up sharply, and it was clear to everyone in the room from the far-away glaze in her eyes that she hadn't been listening.

A tiny sigh. "Sorry, Poe. Could you repeat that?"

The pilot gave a shadow of a frown before continuing. "I was saying that you've had the most contact out of all of us with him. With Kylo Ren." He shot an apologetic glance in the direction of General Organa, who offered no indication that any of his words perturbed her. "What exactly did he say to you on Snoke's snip? Can you try and predict what his next move will be?"

Rey hadn't told anyone what had happened on that ship. They knew about the split lightsaber, of course - she hadn't been able to keep that a secret for long - and they knew she had spoken to Kylo. But the exact contents of their conversation remained something shrouded in the depths of her heart.

She thought back to a few days earlier, when she'd had a moment alone with the general. Rey still felt a little uncomfortable around her, not sure of herself, as if she was always on the edge of saying the wrong thing. She knew there was no reason to feel that way, but she couldn't help it. At first she thought it was the nervousness to be expected when meeting such a figure of legend, someone about whom Rey had heard endless mythical tales even trapped on a sandy rock in the middle of nowhere. But no. It was more than that. It was something about the general herself, the way her eyes looked through her with such gravity that she could feel herself being pulled in, her cool exterior that betrayed so little of the passions beneath, the sense Rey had at times that she was even able to read minds. Honestly, it reminded her of Kylo.

And here's what made it worse: General Organa was like an endless fountain of compassion. From the moment Rey had met her she'd never felt like a stranger. Leia treated her like the daughter she'd never had, like she was a mother making up for years of lost time. They were closer than any two people could be who had crossed paths mere weeks before. Rey should have been grateful - and she was - but somehow it made her feel worse too, for all the closeness she had to this family, to Han and Leia and Kylo most of all, as if she was in intruder to something so deeply personal.

But if the general felt that way, she never showed it for a second.

"Talk to me, Rey, if it helps."

She'd been pacing back and forth, agitated about everything and nothing all at once, when the general walked in on her with hands clasped, the picture of composed regality. Rey felt positively scruffy by comparison.

She had stopped in her tracks and tried to work out what to say -  _if_  she wanted to say anything at all.

There was a rift in the silence then, a chasm of momentous proportions, a space where she could have told Leia everything: about her son, the link between them, the potential she felt brewing in him. But something beyond her understanding held her back. It told her not then, not yet.

So she let the moment pass. "I just feel... adrift," she'd managed. She didn't mention the dark figure stalking her dreams or the insane thoughts he brought to mind.

The general had given her a small smile. "I know exactly what it's like. I felt the same way when I was younger, and there was so much available to me, but so much of it seemed impossible."

She took a seat, and indicated for Rey to do the same.

"You might not want to hear it from an old crone like me, but all of this is a phase. It's part of becoming who you must be. In time it will pass, as all things must."

Then she did something Rey never expected: General Organa took her hand. They sat for a little while like that, together in the stillness, sharing something that didn't need to be spoken to be true, and afterwards Rey couldn't find the words to express her thanks.

But this time she would need to find the words. She forced herself to her feet to speak, so she could look out at the small gathering of expectant faces huddled in the main hold. They were small in number but also stubborn and resolute and keen. As she took in the sight of them something she hadn't been conscious of before softened within her. She felt a warmth growing in her chest, radiating through her whole body. She couldn't let these people, who'd been willing to sacrifice everything to protect her, who'd helped her leave Jakku and find Luke and discover herself, who'd become the best friends she had ever known, down.

"I don't want to overstate what I know," she said. "Really, it's very little. But..."

Suddenly she became aware of a shift in the reality around her. Unmistakable. It was happening again, right now, as she stood before all the resistance members left in the galaxy. The universe had changed in an impossibly subtle way, a way you could only pinpoint after having experienced it. She could see him in her peripheral vision at the back of the room. A solid ghost.

_Oh no. Oh no oh no -_

The words she had been about to speak wilted on her tongue. She couldn't say anything to endanger these people, couldn't tell him anything he didn't already know.

He was fixing her with a look so intense it burned her not to return it. There he was, seething in the corner behind them all, behind his mother, seeing and yet unseen. If nothing had changed about their connection then she was glad her surroundings wouldn't be visible to him, although he'd be able to hear everything said around her. It was vital she control the flow of conversation until he disappeared. Sweat was starting to break out on her hairline at the thought of it. Or was it the searing energy of his gaze?

She cleared her throat and started again.

"What I can tell you about Kylo Ren... he's still dedicated to the First Order, or at least his own vision of it. He had the opportunity to leave with me on Snoke's ship but he didn't take it."

Rey found it hard not to glance over at him. The pressure of it was building behind her eyeballs.

"I don't know what his next move will be. But we can't - I mean, we have no reason to expect him to act any differently than we've seen in the past."

As much as she tried to ignore it, she could feel her cheeks flushing as Kylo continued to stare. She was no public speaker. She'd never had any need for the skill, nor any way to practice it. Some people, like Poe, seemed to relish talking in front of others, but Rey had no knack for it and no appetite to get any better. And here she had to try and concentrate while the galaxy's latest Supreme Leader came to pester her. Kylo was moving in now, she could see at the side of her vision, edging around the others to get closer to her. She tried not to think of predators stalking their prey.

In the seconds that had passed a gap had formed in her words, and someone piped up now to fill it with a question. It was a young man Rey had only spoken to once before.

"You both feel the force, don't you, you and Kylo Ren?" he said. "Can't you, you know, sense him, or connect with him, or know how he's feeling?  _What?_  Isn't that how it works?"

There was a smattering of laughter. At his side the man's friend gave him an embarrassed nudge in the ribs.

Almost without realising, Rey found herself smiling along with the rest of them. She felt a twinge of release, of letting down her guard, of giving in. She couldn't help but look at Kylo in that moment. And as she did, as their gaze connected across the distance of the room and the unknowable space between them, she was struck like a thunderbolt through the chest. Brown eyes engulfed her. The tension between them was strung taut like rope. She could barely feel her breath in her throat, and Kylo Ren was staring at her with an expression of liquid potency. Kylo Ren was  _smirking_.

A voice brought her back from the edge of the precipice.

"Rey, maybe you could tell us what you remember Kylo saying to you."

It was General Organa, and as Rey tore her eyes away, she saw her face was full of questions. It was as if the general was considering a puzzle without a clear answer.

"I... yes," Rey stammered, trying to remember what she'd been saying before. But she noticed that Kylo's slow advance had halted, and when she risked another glance in his direction, she saw he had stopped with his head slung down so she could no longer see his face. What was he doing?

Then the general spoke again. Rey realised that Kylo could hear her.

"Are you alright, Rey? Do you need some time?"

"No," she said quickly, trying to control the urge for her attention to dart between mother and son. "Kylo didn't say much. He seemed more interested in erasing the past than moving beyond it." She took a moment to collect her thoughts. She was aware of his eyes on her again, of the general's eyes, of the eyes of everyone in the hold.

"But despite all that, I think part of him still wants something different. If we want to bet on that... I can't say."

He was moving again, closer now, threading around Poe and even General Organa - with the smallest of pauses, almost imperceptible, but immense in its potential - until he was nearly at her side.

"He's erratic. Dangerous," she finished, the words slipping from flustered lips. To the rest of them it appeared she was staring hard into the distance. But she was looking at  _him_ , only an arm's width away, unable to free her gaze. Her hands were trembling. Her heart felt caged. And his eyes were simmering pools.

Kylo didn't say a thing. He just stared, unblinking, as the rest of her surroundings fell away, as the noise of an impossible future grew in her ears, as the abyss rose to meet her, and the worst part of it all was that she couldn't pick out if it was pleasure or pain she saw reflected back at her.

Then, for a second time, he turned heel and walked away. Out of the room, out of her vision, out of her head.

Her senses returned all at once. She could hear Poe, the general and the others talking among themselves. A single bead of sweat was making its way down her forehead. Her fingers had stopped shaking. As her heartbeat slowly recovered a normal rhythm, she allowed herself a deep sigh.

She took the opportunity to sit back down beside Finn. He looked at her with his brows knit, as if he was going to say something, but she waved away his words before they came. He took the hint and returned his attention to the discussion at hand. Knowing him, she'd still receive a barrage of questioning as soon as they were alone together.

Rey sat back and let the voices of the others wash over her. It had been so close this time. It was becoming clearer to her, like a bad dream she was only starting to remember, that this bond wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. It lingered, longing to be acknowledged, desperate for air and space and time. She thought about Ben Solo, about what she really knew of him. She considered whether it was delusion or arrogance to think she could know him better than his own mother, no matter what strange forces might tie them together. And she wondered what she would be asked to sacrifice before this was all over.


	4. Leash

The next time their connection happened wasn't convenient for Kylo. But then, when was it ever?

He'd been sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at nothing, feeling nothing, trying to empty his head of all conscious thought. It was exercises like this that kept Kylo sane. Kept him centred, even when circumstance threatened to throw him into a swirling pit of chaos. It didn't always work. Sometime the rage burned like a volcano bursting through his chest. Most of the time, though, he was able to control what he felt. But he'd first learned the technique as a student under his uncle, and on bad days that thought alone was enough to send him into a mad fury.

Kylo felt a shift in the texture of the world and opened his eyes. She was standing there in front of him, looking off to one side, engrossed in her own reality.

He let his thoughts return slowly, one by one. They went like this:  _Rey. Beautiful. True. Strong. Light. Dangerous. Rebirth. Desire. Hope. Future. Mine._  It was like a deep jar filling up with water.

What he wanted to say came to him clearly, so he spoke.

"You called me dangerous last time I saw you."

She said nothing.

"Is that what you think? Are you afraid of me, Rey?"

His voice was like metal and sand. Rey couldn't read his emotions. When they spoke like this she always seemed to be on the back foot, always the one left guessing, and it was driving her crazy. She watched him now, sat with his hands clasped and his eyes piercing, as if he had all the time in the world to toy with her. As if he wasn't going to have to make a choice soon. As if everything they had ever known, everything they might ever know didn't hang in the balance.

Rey had had enough of playing it cool.

"If we're asking questions, let me ask some," she said. "Why did you stand there, watching me? Did you enjoy it? You like torturing me, don't you? You like the way it makes us feel closer. Why? Why do you do this to me?"

She heard the rising hysteria in her voice, knew that she was getting too worked up.

"Why don't you say what you really mean," Kylo said with a sly smile.

She didn't need the invitation. She was yelling already. "Who are you, Kylo Ren? Why don't you  _feel_  like normal people feel? Why don't you respond to your own mother when she's sat right in front of you?"

But it was too much. She took back the words even as she said them, even before his eyes lost the glimmer that had been just there a moment before. He averted his gaze.

Her tongue burned in her mouth. She had been cruel, and for what? Where was this getting them, really? Rey already knew the answers to her questions. She knew where he had come from, what had been done to him, why he was like he was. If only she knew what he needed to become something different.

Rey felt her cheeks aflame. There was too much to say and she had left it too long.

She couldn't tell if it was frustration or foolishness that held her back. But she darted from the room, and from him, before she had time to change her mind.

Kylo looked down at his hands. He regulated his breathing and began to clear his mind once more. It was strange. He didn't feel anger, or confusion or sadness. There was a strange calm settling over him, as if things were happening exactly as they were supposed to. His last thought before he wiped his mind clean was one of pure confidence: he would see her again soon, and then it would be time to show her the man he really wanted to be.

.

.

.

Only a day passed before she appeared again. He was practicing his battle stances when an unnatural silence descended, and he knew she must be somewhere close by. He span on the spot, eyes wheeling.

She was there.

She was working on something at the back of a room, the engineering station he guessed, her neck bent, hands turning, focusing intently. She had her back to him but he was at a slight angle, so he could see the muscle moving along her collarbone, the way harsh light from an unknown source fell on her skin and dissipated into a soft glow.

He took a step closer and she didn't respond. She didn't know he was here yet. She couldn't quite see him in the scope of her vision, was too trapped in her work to notice. He wondered what she was fiddling with.

Another step. It looked like something cylindrical and silver in her hands, and already he could guess what it was. But in that moment the lightsaber didn't hold his interest. She was right in front of him.

He lifted his palms until he was nearly touching the back of her arms. He was so close. He felt he could stand like this forever, caught in the trap of her presence. Then she sensed something behind her, a strong urgent aura, and she spun suddenly on the spot, straight into his waiting arms.

For a second she was utterly frozen.

His hands were against her forearms. She could smell him, heavy and dark, and she had to remind herself he wasn't really here with her on the ship, even though all her senses were screaming otherwise.

Unbidden, his arms began to move. Along her skin, down to her waist, then around to her back, pulling her closer. She was without words. She was caught in the force of him.

Now his shoulders enclosed her world, his arms circled her back. The temperature was overwhelming. The scent of him was hard soap and musk. His eyes drew her to him like a planet in orbit around twin suns.

They were closer than they'd ever been, in every sense she could think of. But her brain didn't want to think. Her brain wanted to give way to the animal instinct within her. Her arms, by her sides, longed to feel him, to lose track of the differences between them, the sensation of skin, the feeling of hair underhand, until it was her and him and him and her, distinct but indistinguishable.

As if of their own accord she felt her hands raise themselves and begin to move against the firm expanse of his chest. Energy sparked at her fingertips like pure potential given form, aching to jump the gap. Somehow she felt stronger than just seconds before, more whole, more real. She felt that the answers to the universe lay somewhere beneath this moment. It was like the minutes, hours, days before had all been leading up to now, in preparation for what was waiting just ahead of them: a reality too big for them to grasp, bigger than this moment and the next but adding up to something truly immense.

For the first time she was afraid the illusion might not last. She was afraid he'd disappear right when her whole essence was drawing her to him like a moth to the distant moon.

She wanted him then. And she wanted him most of the time, she realised, like a noise high on the wind she hadn't picked up on until just now. She had been wanting him for weeks.

Fighting it felt wrong, but giving in was worse. Was this submission to a strange force or was it seizing her destiny? She wished she could sort it out in her mind. But the surface of her thoughts was like a cloudy pool that gave no reflection. Ever since Crait she'd felt like an outsider in her own brain, to the feelings that came and went without any say on her part. She was used to being left out of things, a loner, but not within herself. Not like this.

"Rey," he said, pulling her out of herself.

His hands were at the small of her back, so close to going so much further, and it took more willpower than made any sense for him to keep still. He could not escape the warmth radiating between them. He hadn't meant for any of it to happen like this, but he couldn't keep his mind straight enough to care. She was in his arms, staring into his eyes, and his heart wouldn't relax in his chest.

He was accustomed to controlling his thoughts, monitoring his feelings, letting nothing through that wasn't useful to him. These emotions were objectively useless. And yet he couldn't seem to wrestle himself free from them, or worse, the truth he hadn't yet admitted to himself, he didn't want to. He wanted her and he  _wanted_  to want her. When she was close things that were so important moments before no longer seemed to matter. The shape of his world shifted to accommodate her, and somehow, for some unknown reason, he was starting to like it better that way.

Then she did something miraculous. She raised her hand to his face, and placed it on his cheek, and looked at him like he was the air and she was the breeze.

"Ben," she said, for the second time, not that he was counting, and it melted him like it had before. He should hate that name. Somewhere hard and callous within him, he did. And yet, when she said it, with so much tenderness in her voice, he almost forgot who Kylo Ren was and why he had such a chokehold over him.

For now, all he knew was Rey, and it was enough.

Before he even registered what was happening he had closed the space between them. Her lips had opened, she was willing, he came unasked.

And this time there was nothing in the world that could hold them apart, even if Luke Skywalker himself had torn the room in two.

His arms were her arms, her mouth was his mouth. It all became one. The heat between them grew all-consuming: a fire to burn worlds, to bend wills. A flame so purifying it would destroy everything in its path.

Their meeting was something he'd been waiting for without realising, like he was holding his breath against his will. Being with her now was like taking a deep lungful of air, clean and sweet and new. With his skin against hers the past slipped away into something he felt he could move beyond. Her lips were the future. Her body showed him the way. He felt the leash tighten as she pressed urgently against him and he longed to tighten it further. Like this, everything seemed possible.

Eventually they pulled apart, blushing yet bold with the intensity of what had happened.

It was a moment of pure contentment unlike anything Ben had ever known. With a slow sigh Rey laid her forehead against his chest. His heart was beating like a drum. He let his arms move southward, found her lower back and rubbed a thumb against the soft flesh he found there. This girl from Jakku was hard but full of unexpected softness. It was one of the things he liked most.

She tried to drank it all in: the feel of him, every small texture and shape and motion that added up to the man whose arms she had succumbed to, and found she wasn't scared of this closeness but driven by it in a way she had never been driven before. Even the longing to find her parents hadn't felt like this.

They stayed that way, holding on to each other, for many silent minutes. Time seemed to melt away into something else, a suspension of all reality and reason. Life carried on around them, but, for a while at at least, they were immune to its hardships. All there was was each other. Rey tried to shake the thought from her head but it wouldn't budge, something that felt right before it felt sensible or sane or correct:  _maybe this is exactly where I'm meant to be._


	5. Ring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the ending I desperately want for these two, and in my mind the best way to fairly resolve all their shared pains and pleasures. So let me know what you think! Do you like where I've left them? How do you think their story should end? Please share your thoughts, and perhaps I'll return to write more once Episode IX is finally with us.

Space was too vast, too dark, too cold. Rey stared out of the ship window with her hands clasped below her chin. She couldn't see the stars; the artificial light around her overpowered them. The expanse beyond the ship stretched on beyond all reckoning, and it contained within it everyone and everything she had ever known, or would ever know.

There was a knock at the door behind her. "Come in," she called.

Finn entered, jumpy and excitable. "We'll be landing in a few hours," was all he said before rushing on to inform the rest of the crew.

Rey pushed herself away from the window, eyes still fixed on what was beyond. Her stomach wouldn't stop doing flips. Was she ready? Would she ever be ready?

.

.

.

Kylo Ren was looking out of the ship window. He could not see the stars but he knew they were there anyway, evading his vision. He turned.

His room was sparse: a bed, a desk, a chair he never sat in. He was not here often, and when he was he spent his time mainly training or deep in thought. Today his thoughts did not flow like a smooth river, like they were supposed to. Today they were a torrent. She was on his mind, strong and delicate, a contradiction he wanted to throw himself into.

When time crystallised and she appeared he was ready. She was sat on his bed, looking like temptation or redemption or maybe both.

“Hello,” she said.

There was silence between them, spread thick like a blanket. He stood with arms folded tight across his chest. She watched and waited. She liked seeing him like this, natural, not trying to impress or terrify anyone, with an emotion written across his face that she suspected she alone could read.

Rey allowed herself to relax. She wanted the instinct to overcome her, she did not want to think, she wanted to be free of inhibition. She wanted to say the words that needed to be said. Either there was meaning to her madness or she was driven by pure emotion, but the line had become blurred in her mind.

She waited for him to move, to speak, to do anything, so she would not be first to act.

Eventually the impasse broke. He walked towards the bed and looked down at her on the edge of it. Brown eyes latched onto hers. Her mind rushed with a hundred absurd scenarios. The yearning couldn’t grow any stronger she thought, and yet there it was, blossoming like a flower in the desert. Each day she was learning something new about her body, her head, her heart. She felt a shiver run across the surface of her skin.

He sighed deep and low, a sigh he seemed to have been holding within him for who knows how long. Years, maybe. Then he eased himself onto his bed so he was sat beside her.

Rey focused on breathing, on the heat of her body. Ben was here beside her, she could feel him. Kylo Ren had retreated somewhere for now, but she could not say if it was for good. Despite that, she wasn’t afraid. Something was happening. The future no longer terrified her. It was like staring down the barrel of her life and being ready for the impact. Whatever happened would be what was meant to happen.

She took his hand.

They sat, for a while, in the silence of their uncommon company. Ben knew that battleships, troops and power awaited him outside of this link between them. It still called to him like a drumbeat, like a low yearning. But maybe he was starting to feel the power in other things too, in the hand grasping his own and the strange, addictive comfort she brought him.

It was too much for him that she was here. It was too much that the universe was allowing this, encouraging it, nurturing it. How else was he supposed to feel? Rey had snuck into his life and taken root there. And now he didn’t want things any other way. 

He remembered so many eyes full of fear, fear until it was overflowing, terror until it was a river. Was that true power? Or was true power the tenderness he saw now in the eyes of the one sitting beside him? It felt like a riddle no amount of training would help him solve. The answer was a whirlpool burrowing its way into his heart.

There was so much to say but he couldn’t find the way to say it, couldn’t sense for the meaning hidden behind the raw emotion. It was good just to be here, to leave the words behind and let their skin do the talking. Words had failed him so many times. Here with Rey, he felt free from their thrall. She squeezed his hand tighter and in a rush of certainty he felt as if he could withstand any amount of pain, of doubt, of anxiety, for a moment like this.

"I’m still hoping all of this will... work out," Rey said quietly, turning to face him. She let out the smallest of laughs, a brief, uncertain thing. "I must be mad."

Kylo shook his head. She was hope made real, a wish turned into flesh and bone. She believed things that were impossible to anyone else, and in doing so she made him believe them too. Everything had been too stark before. He saw the world now in a swathe of colours, light and dark, deep and subtle. Rey had given him that. It was like he had been seeing only in monochrome before, and could never return to those desolate days.

Now was the time. This felt right, unlike the many wrong things Ben had done in his life. In her eyes there was a universe brimming with possibility, flecked with the past and the future. It was sitting on the cusp of reality. It could go either way, it could be made or unmade in the next few seconds.  “Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He pulled her to her feet so they were both standing, hands still clasped.

Ben met her gaze and felt his heart give way in his chest. They were light years apart, on different ships in different sectors of the galaxy, but when they looked into each other's eyes like this all the distance fell away. Ben was sure of what he needed to do. He allowed himself to give Rey a crooked smile, which she returned with curiosity. Then he closed his eyes.

For a few moments nothing happened: they were still standing there, hand in hand, Rey feeling like she could drown in the suspense. Then Ben’s brows began to furrow deep in concentration. She could hear his breathing, slow and measured. She felt something changing around her, or perhaps it was just her perception. The inside of the Falcon shook and melted away. In its place was green in every direction, a forest of trees thick and yet also full of light. She thought she could smell headiness on the breeze: soil and water, dry and damp.

They were utterly alone.

Ben opened his eyes.

“What have you done?” Rey asked, in shock.

“I’m making things easy for both of us,” he said, and let go of her hands. She was scared the illusion would vanish, but it didn’t. He fixed her with eyes as calm as the forest and dark as the shadows between the trees. “It’s time for us to decide, Rey.”

She couldn’t look at him yet, so she turned and peered over her shoulder, taking in the fullness of this place that they weren’t.

“Is it real?” she said as she turned back. He knew what she meant.

“A dream of a hundred places I once knew. It’s as real as both of us here, together and yet apart.”

She was afraid of the energy he must be exerting to conjure it all up, but he didn’t seem tired. Not yet. He was still looking at her like he would never need to look at anything else ever again.

“You have to pick a side,” he said, almost tenderly.

Rey felt the flare of anger and knew how easy it would be to embrace it. But this time she breathed, deeply, and let it pass. This wasn’t about picking sides. It never had been.

“No,” she said.

Then she stepped closer and looked him straight in the face, like she was seeing him for the first time. Ben Solo. He did look tired now, worn around the eyes, as if from too many restless nights and too much unconfronted pain. He had a nice nose, she realised, and kind eyes. She wondered if this person had always been growing underneath the hate and lies, just waiting for the moment to be free.

Light and dark. The Jedi and the First Order. Life and death, hope and despair, creation and ruin.

The distinctions were built tall in their heads, but they swept away as easily as sand.

To live was to be dying; to hope was to understand despair. Rey saw it now. She was nobody, she was nothing, and she was everything. And so was he.

The forest around them was slipping from sight like a cloud of smoke. In its place came nothingness, a void of every shade and every colour all at once, that felt like every memory they had ever had and every place they had ever been. It was connected to everything, moving through everything, unseen and unheard but recognised in the soul of every living thing without hesitation. They were floating, and their hands were clasped again.

“There is one path,” said Rey. “There has only ever been one path. And we have to walk it together. Do you see?”

They turned their heads and both saw the same thing: a shining ring of light slipping away into the future, a disc beckoning them forward.

Attraction like a magnetic field tugged at them from within. A feeling of sinking and floating simultaneously, of two mighty forces equaled by the strength of the other, of perfect balance. He had always been tired of the past; she had always been drawn to it. Now for the first time, for both of them, it felt unreal, unimportant, a fleeting dream in comparison to the future they could see stretching out before them.

_If this is how it's to end, I want us to choose it together. There are things I no longer want, paths I no longer wish to tread, realities I no longer wish to see. Maybe this is how it feels when the future opens up to you and you see clearly the way through the fog of your life._

_If she chooses me like I choose her..._

_If he chooses me like I choose him..._

_Then we'll know. It's too much to ask, and not enough. It's everything and nothing. Together we'll change it all and return it to what it always was. We'll remake the universe._

They allowed themselves one final look at each other, a look shot through with longing and heavy with desire. It would be so easy to succumb right here, right now, to the immediacy of each other. But what they wanted was more than the pleasure of immediacy. It was the bliss of eternity.

It was not that there was no decision to be made. Rather, it had already been made - how long ago? - maybe decades, maybe centuries. They were here now to play their parts, to fulfil an inevitable truth no less exquisite for its inevitability. It was a law of the universe. It was a rule of their hearts. It was time.

They walked. The light engulfed them, and their shadows were as large as their bodies.

Rey felt herself on another plane, stepping off the Falcon to become who she was meant to be. Ben felt himself leaving his room, entering his new life, shedding the old like snakeskin. The road ahead was not an easy one, but easy interested neither of them. They wanted what nobody else dared imagine: a future without suffering, without sides, without a force to be split one way or another but utterly all-encompassing. They wanted harmony, and now, they saw the smallest spark of a chance. A chance that would grow into an inferno big enough to consume all of existence.

The next time they would meet - no matter how many years might pass or how many battles it might take - it would be for real, in their own skins and on their own terms. He would take her in his arms and she would melt into his body, two lips entwined into one, and the universe would implode along with them. Nothing would ever be the same. Because they were together. Because they were tied.


End file.
